Fourth Amendment
Applying Reasonable Expectation
The Court cautioned that given the great variety of work environments in the public sector, the question of whether an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy must be addressed on a case-by-case basis. For this reason, searches of a DoD employee\'s computer should be evaluated in each case based on several factors. In determining whether or not there was a reasonable expectation of privacy consider whether or not there were consent banners on the computer, whether the employee signed a user agreement that would have lowered privacy expectations, whether DoD or a subordinate unit has a well publicized policy lowering privacy expectations, whether the computer is shared or not, whether the computer is in a private office or not, and whether the unit has a policy of conducting periodic inspections of employee\'s computers.
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